Gruezi Familia (Swiss-German for Hello Family)
How are you all doing? I am so happy! It is a BEAUTIFUL sunny day today! I think it's at least 90 :) I'm so happy I love summer weather! Temple Square is getting more and more busy and I love it because there are so many people to teach.
It's very fun being Sister Eggenberger's companion because now we not only take English tours but French, Swiss-German, Hi-German and Italian tours/walking lessons. So fun, I love it. Sister Eggenberger is so much fun, I really love her a lot she's a great companion. We cook all our food together, run 3 miles every morning and we it's so easy to have balance in teaching with her. It's funny it was never something I thought about before my mission (having good balance in teaching) but it's so important so that you can both testify and allow the Spirit to teach as well. With Sister Eggenberger it's just so natural to teach together.
So it was so nice to talk to you on Mothers Day! I hope all the mothers who are reading this had a very happy day!
So we had a "Finish Strong" meeting a couple days ago for all the Sisters who are going home this transfer, I think it's 23. It was a good meeting and helped me be excited to continue making the last months of my mission the BEST part of my mission. I really feel it has been. I feel so much more confident and humble then I did at the beginning of my mission. I also feel a lot more bold when it comes to inviting which makes me happy because at the start of my mission I knew it was something I needed to work on. And best thing I learned and am continuing to learn is how to rely on the enabling power of grace given to us all because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It is true that we are saved by grace after all we can do. I would not be able to continue to do all that I do in a day without the divine help of The Savior. I'm so grateful to have been able to begin to come to an understanding of this and apply it to my life. Those are some of the things that I've learned but the BEST part about serving a mission is seeing others accept the blessings of the Atonement and how their lives change for the better. Each of the memories I have of great joy are when I've seen someone get baptized or heard their testimony when before they didn't know God. Those experiences continue and I'm grateful every day for them. For instance the story I told you about Christian and picking his baptismal date. We were so perfectly happy because in that instance we were doing exactly what God wanted us to do.
Another example of this was this morning we took a bus tour around Temple Square. Half of the visitors were Chinese speaking so we took around the 9 that were English speaking. All of them had little or no knowledge about the church, some were from Thailand and others were from the Philippines. We had 45 minutes with them to share with them the history and basic beliefs of the church and to share our testimonies with them. At the end of the walking lesson/tour each person requested to learn more, some for missionaries to come to their home and some to learn more by phone or email. It was an amazing experience to be a small part of. Heavenly Father knew they needed the gospel so he sent them to Temple Square. I think about my outbound mission and how amazing it would be to have 9 people knock on my door, ask for the lesson for 45 minutes and then ask me to teach them more, it just doesn't happen. Not that I didn't love my outbound mission experience but the experiences were just different. Today I was reminded how wonderful Temple Square is.
Elder M. Russell Ballard is coming tomorrow morning! I'm so excited to hear the inspiration he will share with us about this mission. Last time Elder Holland came he told us that, that summer was going to be the best summer yet on Temple Square, obviously he was right and we had the most amazing tours and millions of people came. I'm so excited to hear what Elder Ballard is going to say.
Our investigators are doing well. Christian from the Dominican Republic set a baptism date! We had a really neat experience with him as we extended the baptismal invite to him. We had prayed beforehand about a date that he could be prepared to be baptized. I was thinking it would be so neat for him to be baptized on June 14th because he lives in Logan and my parents and I could go when they come pick me up, but then I thought that was just selfish so I didn't want to pick that day but what the Lord wanted. Even after telling Sister Eggenberger about this and praying about it we both felt good about June 14th so we decided that was the day we were going to invite him to prepare for. When we invited him he said that would a perfect day because that is his birthday! We had no idea! Things like that are not coincidences but the divine hand of the Lord in this great work!
Love you all soooooooooooooooo MUCH! Je t'aime (French for I love you)
Sister Turner
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